To many, the emergency budget unveiled on June 22 by Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is drastic. Britain’s value-added tax—a sales tax on all non-essential goods and services—has risen from 17.5 percent to 20 percent. Britain’s capital gains tax, too, has risen, from 18 percent to 28 percent for high earners.

Osborne plans on cutting ₤11 billion in welfare spending by 2014/2015. Families will see their handouts from the government cut or frozen. Public sector workers will have their pay frozen for two years.

Most government departments have been ordered to cut their costs by 25 percent.

Some predict that 700,000 public sector workers will lose their jobs. Many fear major cuts in policing, education and other areas.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith announced on June 24 that plans to raise the retirement age would accelerate. The retirement age was set to increase from 65 to 66 for both men and women between 2024 and 2026. It was to continue to increase every decade until it reached 68 by 2046.

Now, however, the retirement age for men may rise to 66 as soon as 2016.

Britain’s budget is projected to save ₤113 billion. But is it enough to save the economy?

Even if—and it is a big if—the government is able to follow through on all of these plans, the overall British debt will actually increase over the next five years. The budget deficit is projected to fall from its current level of 11.3 percent of gross domestic product, to 1.1 percent in 2015/2016.

However, the budget deficit is the amount of money the government borrows that year. So in 2015/2016, Britain’s overall amount of debt will still be rising by 1.1 percent of gdp. This new budget will mean that Britain will still be getting into more and more debt, it will just be happening more slowly.

Osborne is counting on the British economy to grow steadily over the next few years. Therefore, the debt will shrink as a percentage of Britain’s entire industrial output, even though it is still rising in real terms. But what if Osborne is wrong, and the economy does not grow?

Osborne is trying to walk a tightrope. On the one hand, he does not want to make so many cuts that the economy falls into depression. Yet on the other, he has to make enough cuts that Britain doesn’t end up in the same situation as Greece, facing national bankruptcy.

The debate still rages in British papers as to whether Osborne has leaned too much to one side or the other, or whether he has got the balance just right.

But all that assumes there is a perfect balance—and that a tightrope actually exists.

In reality, Osborne is trying to walk on air, and will come crashing down whichever way he leans.

Why is the economy doomed to fail, no matter what Osborne does?

It is built upon the wrong foundation.

Christ once spoke a parable about a man who built his house upon sand. No matter how hard that man tried to prop his house up, it was doomed to fail eventually.

The same is true for the UK’s economy. There is no perfect balance that will keep it upright.

It is built on the flawed foundation of get, greed and debt.

After America’s financial crisis hit, we wrote in the Trumpet magazine:

What was the cause of this catastrophe? Any direct mention of it tends to raise people’s hackles. People fault the lack of regulation. Okay—but why do we need regulation?Because of greed and its associated sins. Lying. Stealing. Coveting.The love of money, Scripture tells us, is the root of terrible, terrible evil. And as Proverbs 28:20 says, “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.”Across the board people have been working the system to get all they can—regardless of right and wrong, regardless of the non-monetary cost, regardless of who gets hurt.It has all been caused by the way of get. This breaks God’s moral, spiritual law, which establishes the way of give.

Britain, too, has been living this way of get, or more specifically, get now, pay for it later. As of December 2009, the government owes over ₤950 billion, or 68.1 percent of the nation’s entire economic output. There have been numerous warnings that Britain may lose its aaa credit rating—though the rating agencies do seem to be satisfied by the latest cuts.

Individual British citizens are in worse shape. They owe around 75 percent of their annual disposable income in debts.

Osborne’s budget hasn’t changed that foundation of debt. It has merely slowed the rate at which that debt grows.

The Bible speaks out against this way of lust, of living beyond our means and consuming more than we earn. Yet who heeds the Bible today? Most say it is fine for a modern economy to rack up major debts.

But imagine if the economy was a person. This person never pays off any money on his credit card bill. He merely pays the interest. His idea of being frugal is simply to borrow less money each month.

It is obvious that, eventually, he will end up in serious financial trouble. Even if he has more assets than he has debts, he’s going to have to sell off some of his assets—probably at reduced prices—in order to pay that debt back. And eventually, if things don’t change, all the assets will be gone—the cupboard empty.

When it comes to an individual, it is obvious that, at some point, that debt must be paid. But nations too face a time of reckoning.

Britain will not be able to get by on paying interest alone forever.

As the debt grows, the interest grows, until interest payments become so large that it cripples the economy, and investors ask for their money back.

Of course, it almost never gets to that point. A major financial blow usually causes investors to demand their money back before then.

For Britain and America, the only solution is to start again, and build their economies on a surer foundation. Until then, the best this UK budget may do is delay the inevitable collapse.